IV
Entering the skiff, she speaks:
Waters flowing dark and bright
In the sunlight or the moon,
Fill my soul with such delight
As some visible music might;
As some slow, majestic tune
Made material to the sight.
Blossoms colored like the skies,
Sunset-hued and tame or wild,
Fill my soul with such surmise
As the mind might realize
If one’s thoughts, all undefiled,
Should take form before the eyes.
So to me do these appeal;
So they sway me every hour:
Letting all their beauty steal
On my soul to make it feel
Through a rivulet or flower,
More than any words reveal.
V
He speaks, rowing:
See, sweetheart, how the lilies lay
Their lambent leaves about our way;
Or, pollen-dusty, bob and float
Their nenuphars around our boat.—
The middle of the stream is reached
Three strokes from where our boat was beached.
Look up. You scarce can see the sky,
Through trees that lean, dark, dense and high;
That, coiled with grape and trailing vine,
Build vast a roof of shade and shine;
A house of leaves, where shadows walk,
And whispering winds and waters talk.
There is no path. The saplings choke
The trunks they spring from. There an oak,
Floods from the Alleghanies bore,
Lies rotting; and that sycamore,
Which lays its bulk from shore to shore,—
Uprooted by the rain,—perchance
May be the bridge to some romance:
Its heart of punk, a spongy white,
Glows, ghostly foxfire, in the night.